Spacelab Mission Sets Stage for Space Station

"It's sad that this [Spacelab] era is coming to an end," mission
scientist Michael Robinson
of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center told reporters in a preflight briefing
on Tuesday. "But it's also exciting to have long durations; 16 days
isn't enough. We're excited about going to Space Station."

MSL-1, set for launch on April 3 on Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-83),
will be a 16-day mission to investigate a widerange of basic materials sciences
ranging from the proteins that make up humans to the formation of glasslike
metals to how flames form and die.

Recent views of MSL-1: The Spacelab long module - where most of the
experiments will be done - is readied for transfer to orbiter Columbia(right),
and Columbia/STS-83 is rolled to launch pad 39A at Kennedy
Space Center on March 11 (center and right).

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It will also be the last Space Shuttle mission carrying a Spacelab module
dedicated to microgravity materials sciences. The program's lineage stretches
back to Spacelab 1, in November 1983.

While future Shuttle missions will support microgravity experiments -
notably the fourth U.S. Microgravity Sciences Payload (USMP-4) in August
- the principal experiment platform of the future is the International Space
Station which will be assembled starting in December.

"MSL-1 will help us make a smooth transition to Space Station,"
said Teresa Vanhooser, the MSL-1 mission manager at Marshall. "MSL
has made significant advances in bridging the gap between Spacelab and Space
Station."

In addition to carrying a Space Station rack to test experiment replacement
on orbit, the experiment program will operate through three remote payload
centers, and has investigators from Germany, Japan, and even Brazil, like
Space Station. (ISS's principal science teams will be from the United States,
Russia, Europe, and Japan.)

"This process of becoming a team is a good example of how, in future,
science will be done on Space Station," said Dr. Egon Egry of the Germany
Space Agency (DARA). Egry is the project scientist for TEMPUS, the containerless
electromagnetic processing furnace which has German and American investigators.

When asked which experiments would be ranked as most important should
the MSL-1 mission be cut short, Robinson cited his experience with TEMPUS
on its first flight in July 1994. On that flight, a misaligned coil forced
the TEMPUS team to shorten and replan their experiments.

As the TEMPUS team did then, the MSL-1 investigators would make "a
logical group decision," said Robinson who then was the U.S. project
scientist for TEMPUS. "It's a group of smart people here. I have a
lot of faith in them."

While full-scale science operations aboard Space Station are a few years
off, the scientists will not be idle.

"There's a tremendous amount of science that goes on in ground-based
research," Robinson said. "This is just the culmination"
of that work in one flight. Similar work, aboard low-g aircraft, suborbital
rockets, Marshall's Drop Tube Facility, and laboratories where MSL- samples
will be analyzed, will carry science from MSL-1 and earlier Spacelab missions
forward until Space Station facilities are available.

To keep up to date on the MSL-1 mission, visit the
MSL-1 web site. New items are added
weekly, and daily science updates will be provided during the mission.